Just two weeks after he narrowly avoided being assassinated at a rally in Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump’s address in Nashville, Tennessee, over the weekend was momentarily postponed by the Secret Service due to yet another security risk.
A Secret Service spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that Trump was ready to take the stage on Saturday afternoon inside the Music City Center for the 2024 Bitcoin conference when he was forced to wait while two credentialed and screened attendees were removed from the venue for not following proper entry protocols.
Trump’s Secret Service team gave him the order to wait until the two people were located before delivering his keynote address.
“It was determined that there was no protective interest with these individuals and there was never a threat to the former president,” the spokesperson said.
The police questioned both individuals after locating them and removing them from the gathering. Regarding the incident, no charges were brought against either party.
Reports claim that the two individuals skipped the second screening after being detained at the first checkpoint. It’s still unknown how the people got past the screening.
This comes after 20-year-old gunman Thomas Mathew Crooks attempted to kill Trump on July 13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Fortunately, Trump escaped the attack. There was one spectator murdered and others injured. In the incident, Trump had injuries to his ear.
As congressional lawmakers look into how Crooks was able to get onto the roof of a building outside the rally’s perimeter and have a clear view of the former president to fire a gun, the shooting in Pennsylvania prompted bipartisan criticism of the Secret Service for the security lapse.
Since then, Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, has resigned due to security failures.
@SecretService delayed Trump’s Nashville speech following security lapse. https://t.co/ORnHojiTVP
— Mark R Smith (@MarkDaVinciGrp) July 30, 2024
The lead sharpshooter for a local SWAT team has revealed a shocking detail about events before the assassination attempt against Trump.
In an interview with ABC News reporter Aaron Katersky, the local Beaver County, Pa., team said it had “no communication” whatsoever with the U.S. Secret Service before the shooting attempt and did not make contact until afterward.
On the day of the rally, the SWAT team was positioned on the second floor of the building that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, later used to shoot that day. The lead sharpshooter noted that the SWAT team was supposed to receive a “face-to-face briefing” with the Secret Service agents when they arrived on site; however, it never happened.
“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service snipers whenever they arrived, and that never happened. So I think that that was probably a pivotal point where I started thinking things were wrong because that never happened, and we had no communication with the Secret Service,” the lead SWAT sharpshooter said.
Katersky again pressed the team’s top sharpshooter, asking if he had received any communication from the Secret Service “at all on that Saturday.” The SWAT leader clarified that there was no communication from the agency “until after the shooting.”
“And by then —” Katersky interjected before the SWAT sharpshooter responded, “It was too late.”
Katersky continued to explain that the local SWAT team had deemed Crooks “suspicious” before the shooting, and had sent texts with a description and pictures of the 20-year-old. However, none of this information was passed on to Secret Service leaders because of a lack of communication between the two groups.
The SWAT team was assigned to the second floor of Building 6 at the American Glass Research facility by the Secret Service. From there, they could only see into the crowd at the Trump rally. Katersky pointed out that the team reported their inability to see Crooks was not due to a sloped roof or hot weather, but was actually due to the placement chosen by the Secret Service.
There’s more. Local law enforcement provided radios to the U.S. Secret Service for cross-agency coordination during the July 13 rally. However, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on July 28 that the Secret Service never used the radios, as reported by The Blaze.
“We also have it confirmed that the radios that local law enforcement gave the Secret Service sniper teams were never used by the Secret Service,” Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“So again, all of the communication was channeled,” Johnson said. “The sniper and the SWAT teams were on different communications channels than the patrol officers, different communications channels from Secret Service, all funneled in through a central communications system, which delayed things and allowed this tragedy to happen.”
Johnson, the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, stated that counter-snipers did not identify Crooks as a target until after he began shooting at Trump and the rally crowd just after 6:11 p.m.
“They acquired him after the shots were fired,” Johnson said. “But again, we need detailed interviews with those individuals to find out exactly what happened. It’s unbelievable how little information has been coming from federal law enforcement.”
Johnson disclosed that the Secret Service had received images of Crooks taken by a counter-sniper in the area of American Glass Research Building 6 at 5:14 p.m. before the shooting.
The counter-sniper first noticed Crooks at 5:10 p.m., according to a preliminary timeline that Johnson’s office released, The Blaze reported.
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